m203CD08.txt -- CD-based Minix distribution 23 November 2003 Authors: Aleksander Korzynski and colleagues Notes by ASW about the m203CD08iso.gz CD-based Minix distribution: 1. Please be aware that the CD-ROM iso image is a very large file, about 28 MBytes. This is the largest package I have ever posted for download, please let me know if any problems are encountered. If you have difficulty consider downloading from: http://studia.elka.pw.edu.pl/prog/minix/download/m203CD08iso.gz 2. Usually files received as something other than standard *.tar.Z archives are repackaged with the standard Minix compress and tar tools before posting on this site. However, compress as distributed for Minix is unable to usefully compress this CD image, and uncompressed it expands to over 32 MBytes. So it is being posted as a .gz file. Minix releases 2.0.3 and later include gzip and a gzip man page. Since Minix does not currently provide support for burning a CD-ROM you will probably want to expand the archive on a Linux or Windows system, anyway. Linux distributions will usually include gzip, and on Windows WinZip can uncompress the gzip archive. 3. Crc data: 58052 28636699 m203CD08iso.gz 4. For more about the purpose and history of this package see http://minix1.hampshire.edu/faq/minixcd08.html or http://studia.elka.pw.edu.pl/prog/minix/. 5. The page referred to above also describes a bug that was discovered subsequent to the production of the iso image file, and which is therefore not documented in the README file within the CD image. The bug causes the system to freeze immediately after returning to the bootmonitor upon shutdown. Another symptom of, most likely, the same bug is that if in the beginning of the boot process the command ls is issued in the bootmonitor, the system freezes immediately after displaying on the screen the contents of the current directory on the emulated A: drive. If the command is not issued the system can be successfully booted. It is currently thought that this behaviour is the result of bootmonitor's incompatibility with the BIOS-emulated drive. The problem does not occur if the booting process is started from a floppy disk. The following is from the README file that can be found on the root of the CD-ROM or in /root after booting Minix from the CD-ROM. WELCOME TO MINIX! This is an unofficial distribution of Minix 2.0.3. It can be booted directly from CD-ROM into a complete, working operating system. [But see note 5 above, booting from a floppy disk as described below avoids a bug.] The version of this distribution is CD0.8. The distribution has a wide range of applications: from measuring system performance to kernel developing. Booting from CD is significantly faster than from a floppy disk and does not require altering the hard drive. In case the machine cannot be booted from CD-ROM a floppy disk can be created that would pass the booting process to CD-ROM. The easiest way to do this is to boot Minix from CD on another machine, change the current directory to /usr/src/tools # cd /usr/src/tools and then recompile the kernel and store it on a floppy disk: # make fdboot In case no machine capable of booting from CD-ROM is available the floppy disk can be created using the provided floppy disk image. In order to copy the image to a floppy disk use the following command under a UN*X-like operating system: $ dd if=rootfs.img of=/dev/fd0 or use the provided FDVOL.EXE program under DOS: fdvol 1440 A: rootfs.img A diskette created that way will prompt for user confirmation of bootmonitor options at boot. In order to disable this the following command should be executed under Minix: # edparams /dev/fd0 'main(){delay 2000;boot}; save' In order to change the CD device that will be booted by default the script chdefcd can be used, for example: # chdefcd /dev/fd0 c0d2 Changes to the official Minix 2.0.3 interim release: * provided the ability to load the root filesystem to RAM disk from an image stored on a CD conforming to the El Torito bootable CD specification. Stored the patch for Minix 2.0.3 in /MINIX/ADDONS/BOOTCD/ * added /README and /README.TXT (this is one of these files) * created a CD bootable to a specifically-tailored RAM-based system Further information about the changes can be found at /MINIX/ADDONS/BOOTCD/README . The distribution has been assembled by the following team: Tomasz Jordan Kruk, Ph.D. : project coordination Aleksander Korzynski : booting from CD-ROM, final assembly, documentation Marek Majchrowski and Piotr Trojanek : general development Jacek Rozen : general development The team would like to thank the developers of Minix for creating an operating system excellent for educational purposes, especially: Andrew Tanenbaum Albert Woodhull Kees J. Bot and all the contributors who sent countless add-ons. 10 Nov 2003 Author: Aleksander Korzynski Warsaw University of Technology